The Theistic Conception of the World / An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought

by B. F. Cocker

3. A third and intermediate school assumes the existence of a plastic nature (vis formativa) intermediate between the Creator and his work, by which the phenomena of nature are produced. This hypothesis was propounded by Cudworth, and has lately been reproduced by Dr. Laycock and Mr. Murphy under the name of "unconscious organizing intelligence," to explain those facts of organic nature which come under the relation of means and ends, or structure and function. This hypothesis must deflect toward one or other of the extremes indicated, when it attempts to decide in what subject this "unconscious intelligence" inheres. If it be said that it inheres in matter, the tendency must be toward Atheism: that it inheres in spirit, then the tendency is toward Pantheism.

Common to all these hypotheses is the denial of the direct, immediate, and voluntary agency of God in nature as the only real and efficient force. They are all attempts to account for the conservation of the world by "the conservation and transformation of energy," that is, by secondary causes, which in reality are only conditions and not real causes. They interpose a chasm between God and the world. The universe is a self-supporting, self-evolving machine, and God is an isolated, incommunicable abstraction.

It is to be deplored that certain Christian writers have deemed it necessary, on what they consider moral grounds, to give countenance to theories which in one form or another ascribe a real efficiency to natural laws, and dispense with the immediate and ceaseless agency of God in the conservation of the world. They imagine that some such hypothesis is needed to vindicate the Divine honor and righteousness. In their imagination, it derogates from the Divine majesty to be ceaselessly concerned and busied with the minute and insignificant operations of nature, or even cognizant of them. His eternal serenity would be disturbed, and his unsullied purity compromised by any connection therewith, and He would become responsible for the disorders and abnormities, the evils and sufferings, which appear in the world. He must, therefore, be released from a constant and direct connection with the universe. He must leave nature to the necessary predestinated course of self-evolution, or, if He interpose at all, it must be in some exceptional, extraordinary, and supernatural way; so that, if there be a providential administration, every act and incident thereof must be a miracle.

We respect the motives, but we can not approve the procedure or commend the logic of these theologians. The moral difficulties they would by these hypotheses evade still remain in all their force. "Any hypothesis which essays to relieve these difficulties from pressing against Providence only transfers and leaves them to press with equal force against an original creation."[231] The Supreme Intelligence which originally endowed matter with its properties, and ordained the laws of force, must have foreseen all possible combinations, interactions, and consequences, and, if it be proper to speak of responsibilities in this connection, must be as responsible for these consequences as though they were the direct effect of immediate volition. An agent is accountable not only for his acts, but for all the foreseen consequences of his acts. The solution of these difficulties must be sought in another field.

Meantime it may be observed that these theologians affect a concern for the Divine honor which even revelation itself does not confess. It teaches that all the operations of nature are the operations of God, and no apologies are offered for consequences which, to short-sighted men, may appear to conflict with righteousness or love. Does the earthquake tear the mountain asunder, and spread devastation and death throughout the surrounding country? it is the Lord who roareth from Zion, and uttereth his voice from Jerusalem; He causeth the habitation of the shepherds to mourn, and the top of Carmel to wither.[232] The people bow their heads with reverence, and in their chastening sorrows see the hand of God. But these philosophic theologians must correct the language of Scripture, and tone it down in harmony with the capricious demands of modern scientists. The language of the ancient Prophet of God is simply the expression of a childlike and subjective conception of nature which modern science has emptied of all its significance. The earthquake was the product of "secondary causes"—of inherent nature-forces which now exist and act independent of the agency and control of God. To maintain the consistency of their hypothesis, they will even affirm that the catastrophe was unforeseen, and did not come within the purview of the creative plan. The exuberance of the Oriental imagination has thrown a haze of unreality over all the descriptions of natural phenomena, and therefore the language of the inspired Psalmist must be amended. When he tells us that God "covereth the heavens with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth," we must paraphrase after the following fashion: "In the beginning God gave to water those properties, and determined those cosmical conditions which, when coincident, result in the formation of clouds and the descent of rain!" This, we are told, is the interpretation which modern science demands. Conservation is simply "the indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force," and Providence is "the uniformity of natural law." We must no longer believe that God is a present, immanent, and diffusive Power and Life in nature. To find the connection between God and nature we must remount by a process of regressive thought to the first, and, indeed, the last act of creation—the primal origination of matter and motion. So that if now piety would stand face to face with its supreme object, it is compelled to fling itself back into the abyss of duration, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were formed.

Practically, this conception gives us a universe without a God; for the world, once created, and stocked with the necessary forces and adjustments and laws, will henceforth govern itself. It will run its predestinated course in obedience to an original impulse, and realize a perpetual motion without further oversight or care or control. The world is a huge soulless machine, and theology is reduced to Mechanical Deism! But surely no one pretends that this theory satisfies the demands of Scripture language, and fills up the complement of its idea. Practically, it renders the Word of God of no effect.

This theory is equally inadequate to satisfy the cravings of the human heart. "The heart demands a present God—a God who is never far from any one of us; it demands the immediate presence and constant care of a heavenly Father; it demands, when it looks upon nature, to feel that God is there, not in his laws only, but in conscious and perpetual action; not in the sense of a Wisdom and Goodness, embodied in arrangements contrived and perfected long ago, as the mind of an artificer may be said to be present in the work of his hands, but in the sense of a Love co-present to every aspect of nature, and a Will inworking in every event that takes place."[233] "Reacting against the usurpation of secondary causation, wearied of its distance from the Fountain-head, it flings itself back with pathetic repentance into the arms of the Primary Infinitude."

The relation of God to the world, however, is a problem which can not be solved by an appeal to sentiment. The religious consciousness may be the counter-proof, but it can not be the starting-point of a philosophy which aims at the explanation of things—that is, of their origin and continuance—by principles and ideas of the reason. For what is meant by understanding, but translation into ideas, and comprehending under necessary principles? Any theory which essays such explanation of things must therefore commend itself to the logical understanding, and be capable of logical construction.

Now the various hypotheses which seek to dispense with the immediate agency of God, and to explain the conservation of the world by "secondary" or natural agencies, when critically examined do not satisfy the understanding. However convenient for the evasion of difficulties, however plausible for their simplicity and manageable clearness, on a closer inspection they are found to be inadequate.

1. There is the hypothesis of natural law. The world is governed by general laws which are fixed and immutable. These laws were impressed upon matter at the beginning, and in obedience to them the universe has gradually evolved itself in rigid continuity and necessary order. No room, therefore, is left for special direction or providential control, and if the term "providence" is at all permissible, it is only as a synonym for natural law.